The Red Shirt Rule
by Glory1863
Summary: Why Spencer Reid is a "Star Trek" fan. It's probably not for the reason you think


On the jet on the way home from their latest case in Colorado, the topic of conversation between the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit team members had somehow turned to _Star Trek_ and Dr. Spencer Reid.

"Hey, I know why you're a _Star Trek_ fan, Pretty Boy." Derek Morgan grinned, white teeth stark against dark skin. "You identify with Spock."

Reid did, in a way. Spock made being smart about as "cool" as it was ever likely to get, at least in a Las Vegas public high school. Spock almost always behaved with dignity. No matter the provocation, he could compartmentalize and keep his emotions under control. Yes, despite what a lot of people thought, Vulcans did have emotions; they just didn't let them show. They didn't let others know how much they were getting to them. Now there was a quality a constantly bullied and teased little boy needed to cultivate in order to survive! But most of all, Spock loved his mom. It didn't matter that his father's people always looked askance at her or that she was emotional. It only mattered that she was his mom and that, no matter what, she also loved him.

"No, Morgan, I think it's because he identifies with Data," Jennifer Jareau offered.

That was true, too, as far as it went. Data was an android who desperately wanted to be human. Reid was human but rarely felt like he fit in with his fellow humans. Data was a font of information. It was a large part of his value to the _Enterprise_. Unfortunately, Data didn't know when to put a cork in it, couldn't grasp the concept of "too much information." It aggravated Captain Jean-Luc Picard to no end. Reid was 99.99587% certain that his boss, Aaron Hotchner, felt the same way about him and for the same reason. And there was that time when another agent, Emily Prentice, who was no longer with the team, had lightly poked at him after one of his information dumps and exclaimed, "He seems so life-like!"

"You're both wrong," Penelope Garcia piped up from her cyber lair in far away Quantico. "Gorgeous Gray Matter identifies with the EMH, the Doctor, on _Voyager_. Just because he doesn't like E-mail and doesn't tweet or Facebook doesn't mean he doesn't know about computers. Not like _moi_ , of course."

"Nobody knows computers like you, Baby Girl."

"Too true, Chocolate Thunder, but Junior G-Man has doctorates in chemistry, engineering and math. If you think he did that without knowing his way around a computer, then you be seriously trippin'. Plus, the Doctor, the EMH that is, likes classical music, too. He even sang opera on the show."

"He sang _La Donna È Mobile_ from Giuseppe Verdi's opera _Rigoletto_. Robert Picardo, the actor who played the EHM, is an accomplished singer. While at Yale, which he entered for pre-med but ended up with a degree in drama, he performed with the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus, the second oldest undergraduate a cappella group in the US. He was also in the touring company for Leonard Bernstein's _Mass_ when it debuted in Europe."

"Right. So why are you a _Star Trek_ fan? Leave it to the older agent, David Rossi, to cut to the chase.

"Actually, you're all wrong," Reid replied. "Do you know about the red shirt rule in _Star Trek_?"

Aaron Hotchner looked up from his paperwork. "Isn't that where any guest star or bit player who wears a red shirt is likely to come to a bad end?"

"Exactly."

"How did that make you a fan?" the newest agent, Kate Callahan, asked.

Reid turned in his seat to face her. "You know how we were sharing things earlier at the crime scene? Well, one of the main things you need to know about me is that everyone who ever really matters to me eventually leaves."

"Reid . . . ," Hotchner warned.

"I'm really sorry, Spencer," Callahan said.

"It will save a lot of time if I tell you about it now. No worries about accidentally saying something unfortunate later.

My father, an attorney, abandoned my mother, a professor of medieval literature, and me when I was ten. He lost his confidence, or so he told me later. I suppose it could be true. It's hard to know what to do when your wife is a paranoid schizophrenic and your too bright son, like her, prefers books and reading to sports and could probably pass the bar at an age too young to take it.

My mom, as I said, is a paranoid schizophrenic, so while she might have been there physically while I was growing up, she wasn't always there mentally. Not her fault. Not her choice. It was just the way things were. When I turned 18, I knew I couldn't help her anymore. I couldn't keep her safe." Reid shrugged. "Maybe I just wanted to live my own life like any other 18-year-old, so I had her committed to a nice, safe sanitarium where she could get treatment and I could 'move on' without having to worry about her. At best, it's probably a toss up as to just who abandoned who in that case."

"Spence, that's not true! You write to your mom every day. You visit her when you can. It's obvious that you love her. I don't need to be a profiler to see that."

"I second that motion, JJ. God, Reid, when you had me record that farewell message to your mom when you were exposed to anthrax you might as well have ripped out my heart and stomped on it."

"Isn't leaving a farewell message a _Star Trek_ thing, too?" Rossi asked. The comment was greeted with surprised looks from the rest of the team. "What? I'm not culturally illiterate," Rossi grumbled.

"I write to my mom because I feel guilty and I've only visited her when I needed something for a case."

A silent look passed between Hotchner and Rossi before Rossi remarked, "Callahan, when we have a slow day back at Quantico, ask Reid about his Grand Canyon memorabilia collection."

Reid swallowed with a gulp. "When I was in college, I met Jason Gideon. Yeah, that Jason Gideon. You know the name. He took an interest in me and pulled all sorts of strings so I could join the FBI and the BAU without necessarily meeting all the prerequisites. He taught me most of what I know about profiling. I guess he became something of a father figure to me, and like my 'real' dad he just up and disappeared one day, too. At least Gideon left me a letter. He tried to explain that the job just didn't make sense anymore and he had to make a change. I understand that. I really do. What I don't understand is why I've never heard from him again. I wasn't the job. I was his assistant on the job, a fellow agent. I never thought of myself as the job, but I guess I was wrong." Again, Reid shrugged his shoulders in defeat.

"Then there was Elle Greenaway, another agent. We were working a case. Long hours. Lots of stress. You know how it is. Hotch sent her home to get some rest. It was a perfectly reasonable order under the circumstances, but Elle was attacked and badly injured in her own home by the unsub. When she returned to duty, we were on another case and used her as a decoy. Things didn't go as planned because she thought we didn't have her back. I knew she was struggling, but as you may have noticed, I don't always 'get' social cues, so I didn't know whether saying something to Hotch would be a good thing or merely tattling. I said nothing. She left. I've never heard from her again, either. Maybe that was my fault, too.

Emily Prentice was yet another agent . . ."

"Reid," Hotchner cautioned. There were still aspects of Prentice's service jacket that were classified.

Reid nodded once in acknowledgement. He knew he tended to ramble, but he wasn't careless with sensitive information. "Prentice got involved with a terrorist while working for another agency. When he escaped from custody, he immediately came looking for her with homicidal intent, as you might well imagine. She was badly injured in an encounter with the man, and the decision was made, well above my pay grade, to allow the world to think she had died. I made a fool of myself crying over the loss of a friend for 10 weeks. She eventually came back and now heads Interpol's office in London, but it was never the same.

Maeve you already know about."

"I'd like to know more . . . if you ever feel like talking about her." Callahan offered a small, encouraging smile.

"So what exactly does _Star Trek_ and that red shirt rule have to do with this?" Rossi still seemed mystified.

"Sometimes – a lot of times, actually – I wish real life was like _Star Trek_ , because then people who were only going to float through my life would wear red shirts and I'd know not to get involved with them."

At Rossi's raised eyebrow, Reid hurried to add, "I don't mean that I'd treat them badly. I just wouldn't let myself get all that invested in their presence. Every time I do and they leave, I feel like they've taken a piece of me with them. I'm afraid that someday there won't be anything of me left."

Reid rose a bit unsteadily. "Excuse me, but I've got to . . . go." He headed down the aisle toward the lavatory aft, trying to avoid the appearance of running away, although he knew that was exactly what he was trying to do.

Once safely inside, he hurriedly locked the door and then leaned over the water basin, hands on either side holding himself up, as he struggled to control his breathing. He wasn't used to reeling off an information dump about himself, so what had seemed like a new and good idea a few minutes ago now seemed like the height of foolishness. On playing it back with his eidetic memory, Reid winced at how much he sounded like a loser, a total wimp. Still, Callahan seemed decent enough and the others already knew his sorry tale, so maybe it wasn't quite the total disaster his memory was trying to convince him it was.

Reid looked up into the mirror above the water basin. What he saw was entirely unprepossessing: A skinny, pale guy with dark shadows under his eyes, shaggy hair in need of a trim and a crooked tie. The thought came to him: Maybe the Red Shirt Rule didn't apply to his friends and family. Maybe it was actually Spencer Reid himself who wore the red shirt.


End file.
